Fair complaint, but it cannot be any worse than the HS community gets from the HTFU and git gud crowd that tends to respond to our concerns when voiced in the forums. The revelation (at least to me) that both the Devs and the CSM rely on slack/ tweet fleet for most of their information gathering outside of fanfest better explains the apparent disconnect with certain player type factions within EVE and re-enforces my belief that those in power must actively reach outside their normal lines of communications to enhance their decision making. Thanks for wading through the swamp to engage with us, I can only hope you are able to direct your fellow CSM members and the Devs to reach out more.

like maybe the actual high sec rep might like to add something at some point… where is steve?

Today we’re really excited to share our plans for a new feature called Resource Wars. Coming your way in the upcoming October expansion, EVE Online: Lifeblood, Resource Wars will enable you to continue fighting for your Empire in sites called Mining Expeditions all across high-sec space.

After warping to a Mining Expedition’s heavily worked asteroid fields, you can take part in the struggles of New Eden’s empires to mine rare ores that are the lifeblood of their war machines. You’ll have to hold off ruthless pirate raiders hoping to seize these riches from your empire, so that the Mining Expedition’s freighters can safely deliver their precious cargo to the empire’s refineries and shipyards. It’s vital that your empire recover as much as possible from the depleted asteroid fields as they look to build up their fleets into ever more powerful armadas. You and your friends will be critical to their efforts.

For decades, each of the four core empires have been sending Mining Expeditions into these asteroid fields to harvest the vast quantities of ore required to manufacture advanced technologies. These extremely important strategic resources have been gathered under the watchful eyes of each empire’s dedicated military logistics and supply corporation. They have surveyed all existing mining expeditions and determined that they are rapidly being exhausted with pirate raiders wreaking havoc on their returns. A high priority is now being placed on extracting all remaining resources in the face of growing pirate raids. As Blood Raiders, Guristas Pirates, Serpentis and Angel Cartel attack these desperate operations, it is essential that capsuleers play their part in the resource wars between the empires and the pirates.

You and your fleet mates will form a strike team with the empire mining expedition fleet to warp to these previously secure sites and survey the environment to select the best asteroid clusters to focus on. If you choose to mine with the fleet, your role will be to gather the resources as quickly as possible and deposit the rare ore into waiting haulers. If you fit for combat, you will defend the fleet miners against the incoming pirates and their reinforcement waves. After your force enters a site, mine the asteroids and eliminate the pirates as quickly as possible before heading to the next site once the haulers are filled and warp away. These sites will contain a new asteroid type, never seen before in New Eden.

The Mining Expedition sites are located in each empire’s own space all across high sec. With 5 tiers, they are an ideal place for new players, veterans and everyone in between to work together towards a shared goal with clear goals, objectives, and feedback. The reward for successfully completing the sites will be ISK, standings and LP with the new Resource Wars corporations.

These newly available corporations are:

Imperial War Reserves of the Amarr Empire
State Military Stockpile of the Caldari State
Federal Strategic Materiel of the Gallente Federation
Republic Fleet Ordnance of the Minmatar Republic

Increasing your standing with the corporations will allow you to enter more restricted sites where you fill higher capacity haulers and face tougher opponents. For those you’ll be able to bring higher tier ships and earn greater rewards for your efforts. Tier 1 of the mining expedition sites will be open to Corvettes and Frigates, with expedition sites opening up to Battleships at Tier 5. The sites will have a maximum capacity, but your empire does not expect you to share your reward so the number of players who enter the site alongside you will have no impact on the payouts.

While in the site, you will notice that the empire’s ships have new SKINs–a unique one for each empire. These will be available to you inside reward crates available for Loyalty Points (LP) and ISK from each empire’s Resource Wars corporation LP stores.

These reward crates will also contain a selection of ships with basic modules to complete a fit and a fitting plan. We want to allow players to participate in the Resource Wars, earn standings to unlock the higher tiers, and use their ISK and LP to buy the next tier reward crate from the LP store. As these ship packages feature a unique Resource Wars SKIN and will be available via the LP store through all stations in each empire’s sovereign high-sec space, they will cost more than purchasing the same hull straight from the market.

As we head towards the launch of the EVE Online: Lifeblood expansion on October 24th, we will keep you updated on Resource Wars as it progresses, sneak peaks of the new SKINS, and other possible items we’re considering for the new reward crates.

Still have questions,though. It says that you have to form a “strike team”, implying that fleet up before the site is mandatory. The site is limited by finite group size, but if a couple pilots leave (is there a penalty?) could a couple PvP or griefer players then enter? More info is needed and I’ will have to run a few before a final judgement. I am at least interested to try it out and it is new HS content, so it is a start (I hope).

I don’t think that they will deliver better ISK/hour than Level 4s, so in the long run they will just be ignored by serious PvErs. Even CCP Affinity has stated that these missions are seen as a way for new pilots to move elsewhere in the game. The old “highsec as a starter area” poltergeist never stops haunting Highsec…

With the next big expansion EVE Online: Lifeblood coming 24 October, we’re introducing an exciting new feature called Resource Wars. Resource Wars will enable you to continue fighting for your Empire in sites called Mining Expeditions all across...

Highsec is a starter area. It’s where everyone starts. So the content needs to be accessible to people starting out, who don’t have friends already in low/null/j-space to get them hooked in out there. That doesn’t mean it can’t scale up to retain experienced players, just that all of the content has to have an element that lets new players hook into it, or they’ll get pissed off and quit. In this case, it’s the Level 1-2 sites, near as I can tell.

Yeah, it’s where people starts, but it’s not just some “starter area” which people must or should leave to enjoy advanced content. To many people highsec IS EVE. You can’t neglect them hoping that they’ll “get it” an leave the “starter area” and go play the “real game”. Because when they leave highsec, they leave EVE altogether, for no reason or gain. EVE losses as a whole when people ask “what else there is” and the answer is “group pvp in low/nul/wh motherfuker, grow a pair and play the real game!”

I agree. I think the entire EVE ecosystem needs to be carefully curated and grown, but highsec’s got its own particular demands. Things like:

There needs to be a way for new players to access (or at least progress toward accessing) the content.
There needs to be a way for players to experiment with both solo and group content.
Between those two, there needs to be a path for players to find like-minded groups who can help them find the parts of the game they’ll enjoy, even if that’s ‘More Highsec’.

Highsec needs to be where people who have no idea what’s going on can learn everything they need to learn to start figuring out what parts of the game they want to learn more about. And if they want to stay solo, in HS, there needs to be stuff for them to do. If they want to do group stuff in HS, there needs to be a framework for that, too.

There’s no one ‘right’ way to play the game. But at the same time, that means no matter what CCP does, they’re walking a tightrope made of razor wire: one little slip, and there’s blood everywhere.

It’s the same for players corps, “gota join one or your not going to be happy and stay playing” is consistently spouted out as advice by streamers and even CCP themselves, never a word on the benefits of forming relationships within your starter NPC corp.

CAS does things. We have a mining fleet, null sov held by the CASalt corp who where in the AT. Group access to null and WH’s, null pvp roams with free ships, high sec pve fleets, corp chat vets and trolls, gankers, mission runners, explorers etc etc… nothing ever promoted by CCP, the only chap I have ever seen even mention it was Jin in the excellent vid he did on Spheres of Influence

Uhhhhm… not to point out a hole in your logic here, but what you phrase as ‘join one’ is ‘join or start’ one, and never expressed as ‘you’ve got to’… and uhm…

Erebus_TheChin_Sundance:

CAS does things. We have a mining fleet, null sov held by the CASalt corp who where in the AT.

You mean a player-owned, player-founded corp? The very thing you’re arguing against? Sure, player corps grow out of groups of people who meet in NPC corps. Happens all the time. It’s one of the primary ways player corps form. Congratulations, you’ve hit on… exactly the mechanic CCP’s envisioned?

Actually I think that a oficial version os corp-history would be something very interesting to show to any new player. It’s being very hard to follow all history and I personally just start to understand a very small part of the backstabing and some conflicts after I saw on youtube a vídeo made by @Jin_taan called spheres of influence, about corps and their location on map

Sometimes is this kind of information that might also bring more add-value to the all EVE’experience

Don’t wave your bizarre orange missile with green flame at the top around like… wait, that’s a carrot, isn’t it?

Huh.

Overall, though, my point was that CCP’s not trying force people to be social, they’re trying to give people new options, new ways they can be social. You don’t have to talk to anyone in the resource sites. Cruise in, drop combat drones, start mining, and ignore everyone around you if you want. Clearly, they’re not exactly industry leaders in ‘how to design engaging solo content’, but they’re working on it. The longer they work on it, the better they’ll get at it.

For some reason @Jin_taan and others keep bringing up Cosmos Agents. I wonder just exactly how many people actually have experience with them and can give an informative opinion about Cosmos missions. Here is my experience and impression of Cosmos.

First of all I have completed almost all Empire Cosmos Agents for Amarr, Caldari, Gallente and Minmatar in both High and Low sec space. I only have 2 Agents left to complete (Amarr & Minmatar) which are the ‘End Game’ content for Empire Cosmos.

The reasons I haven’t done those 2 Agents yet is:

They don’t offer any tangible reward like the other Cosmos Agents such as Storyline BPC, Modules, Munitions, Implants, etc.

Their 8 to 10 part mission series consists mainly of destroying each others Faction NPC’s resulting in numerous Faction standing hits for ship kill.

There’s nothing left to Cosmos after completing them.

All 4 Factions Cosmos have completely different story plots which I found very entertaining. Also those missions use to have excellent visual graphics that was rarely seen elsewhere in-game (CCP should definitely restore those asap). Besides ISK and Faction Standing increase, most of the missions also rewarded the player with Storyline BPC’s, Storyline Modules, Faction Munitions and Implants.

Back when I first started doing Cosmos missions, players could reject the very first mission offer from a Cosmos Agent and then later go back and get that offer again. For some reason CCP decided to change that and turned the rejection into a fail, thus cutting off any option for players to continue at a later more convenient time with that Agent as well as possibly cutting off access to other Cosmos Agents too. That game mechanic definitely needs to be removed.

Another bad aspect of Cosmos is they can only be completed once in the life of the character. That mechanic seriously needs to be changed and turned into something similar to Epic Arcs, maybe have Cosmos Agents become available again after 1 year of completion.

Most of the Storyline module stats are sub-par when compared to Tech 1 and Tech 2 modules. They need to have their stats buffed to bring them above Tech 2, be equal to Faction but still remain below Deadspace levels. Also the amount of materials required to manufacture Storyline BPC’s needs to be lowered or at the very least be more easily accessible to collect.

Caldari, Gallente and Minmatar Cosmos Agents can be done in progressive levels, meaning players can do all level 1 Agents and then progress to level 2, then level 3, etc. Some of these Agents are chained together but are still the same level making it easy to complete. Amarr Cosmos is the exception which has various Agent levels all chained together thus requiring players to have a fairly high amount of Amarr Faction standing just to start running them. That fact alone makes it much tougher for players to engage in that content.

In my opinion with a little bit of work CCP can easily make Cosmos Agents much more viable as PvE content. Implementing the changes I mentioned would ultimately entice more players to engage in that content.